


In Case of Damage

by Charientist



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: "Natural" Disasters, Drinking to Cope, Fake Ghosts, Gen, Gossip, Heavy Drinking, Silver Queen's Dreaming of Sunshine Universe, Swearing, mention of vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-02-27 11:47:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18738397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charientist/pseuds/Charientist
Summary: Towa and Komachi go drinking after one of Red Team's missions and try to explain to the bartender why Bat is impossible.





	In Case of Damage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheShadowSwan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheShadowSwan/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Dreaming of Sunshine](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/53648) by Silver Queen. 



The Drowning was small and warmly lit, tucked in the depths of ANBU headquarters. It was the only place ANBU could go drinking together, given that they couldn't go to a public bar in uniform or dress down without exchanging identities, but it bore little resemblance to a typical shinobi drinking hole.

There were no kunai embedded in the walls or deep gouges in the bar itself, no large booths constructed so nearly every seat had a view of the whole room, and not nearly enough space for semi-friendly brawling. There was only the bar itself, half a dozen stools in front of it, and a couple small booths heavily sealed and warded for privacy. The bartender – ANBU Otter – was there as much to keep plastered operatives in line as to dispense liquor.

“Hello,” Otter said as two distressed members of Red Squad slumped onto the stools in front of him. “I don’t think I’ve seen either of you here before. First visit?”

Towa nodded and raised one arm in a limp wave. “Towa,” he introduced himself, then redirected the wave to his partner. “Komachi.”

“Welcome Towa and Komachi,” Otter answered as if they were here for anything other than sobbing their sanity into alarming amounts of alcohol.

It was called The Drowning for a reason.

“Ground rules,” Otter said, and while his voice was still pleasant, there was an edge no ninja would be stupid enough to ignore.

Well. Between any lingering pride and the relaxants in the booze, maybe some ninja would piss off the man supplying them with liver poison, but anyone who made ANBU should pass out before getting that stupid.

“First. You’re still ANBU. If you’re on call, you’re on call, and you’d better be able to purge what you drink or I’ll do it for you.

“Second. No violence in the Drowning. You want to cope with mission bullshit by wrecking inanimate objects, wreck your own shit. You want to do it by beating each-other blind, take it to the training fields and hope someone will patch you up after. Start anything here, and you will wake up in the infirmary and not be welcome back.

“Third. All classification rules apply. I’m at basic level 7. If you’re here to spill your guts, literally or not, fine. But at this point in your careers I shouldn’t have to explain the consequences of betraying the village’s confidence. Understand?”

None of the rules were surprising. Towa could have guessed them based on word of mouth alone, but that didn’t make them less serious. He nodded solemnly and saw Komachi doing the same beside him.

“So,” Otter said, his whole demeanor shifting as he passed over their drinks, leaning forward in an unsurprising show of eagerness. “What are you here to forget?”

“Ugh,” Komachi groaned.

Towa grimaced in agreement behind his mask. “Bat.”

Otter hummed, politely glancing aside as they used minor slight-of-hand to knock back their shots without revealing their faces. “That would be one of your squadmates?”

Komachi grumbled an affirmative.

“So…” Otter prompted.

Towa huffed. Most everything was eyes-only or close to it, and Level 7 classification wouldn’t let them explain much. Part of the problem with Bat was that their missions _relied_ on being ridiculous and unbelievable, which was hard to convey without any details.

It was probably for the better, though. If any of the other villages knew what Red Squad had done, what it was capable of… Well, for one, all their work on making massive disasters look natural would be wasted.

For two?

There were a lot of reasons for Shinobi wars and grudges, but nothing ever united your enemies like becoming truly feared. The ruins of Uzushio were proof enough of that.

Towa considered it for a moment, running a finger over a barely perceptible scratch in the wood of the bar as he turned over what they knew about Bat besides her mission performances. “So, our Taicho recognized her by her fighting style, but was clearly surprised that she’s specialized in sabotage. I _do not_ understand. He should have expected it the first time she made a plan for _anything_.”

“Ugh,” Komachi repeated. “I forgot about that. What was it she said? Ruins everything she touches?”

Otter tilted his masked face in a show of curiosity or surprise. “That bad? Is this something you should be reporting?”

Towa blinked up at him, mildly confused. There was a warmth already settling in the core of his stomach, because Otter’s tap was _strong_ , but he was near drunk enough that the conversation should stop making sense like that.

Komachi waved a hand as if to waft the air between them. “No, she’s not – um. Bat’s not a problem for the squad. Or the village. And she’s an excellent comrade. Just…”

Towa fought back an urge to rub his eyes behind his mask as he realized what they were talking about. Maybe he was more drunk than he thought to miss that subtext? Or maybe pouring alcohol on top of acute stress was a terrible idea in the first place.

He considered that for a moment, then motioned for another drink and knocked it back. “She’s a sabotage specialist,” he reiterated, savoring the sharp burn in his throat as a point of focus. “And she’s got a particular gift for disguising her actions not as enemy activity, but as ‘100 percent natural, what a crazy random happenstance!’”

Komachi tsked impatiently. “That’s not the thing, Towa. You ever stop to think about it, ninja in general are ridiculous. You ever seen the kind of bullshit S-ranks are capable of? And we’re all a little used to it, but we’re still aware that like. Reality has rules. You want to break the rules, you gotta have a fuckton of chakra and maybe a bloodlimit or two.” Komachi hunched over her empty glass and twisted it restlessly with one hand, her posture tight enough that Towa figured she was scowling.

Otter swapped her glass with a full one in the space of a blink, so Towa blinked again to give her a moment to knock it back without showing her face. When the glass resting on the counter was empty again, Komachi shuddered but didn’t continue.

Towa regarded her hunched form, taking a few second to lean back and breathe, circling a cautious touch of chakra to his nose. The sharp scent of chemical sterilization was almost as strong at it was at the hospital, but it lacked the underlying notes of blood and anxiety. It also didn’t have a hint of vomit, which was a pleasant surprise. Komachi herself smelled more like an odd combination of frustration and resignation than anything more problematic, and he wondered if she was having the same anxiety-and-liquor drop that he was.

He let go of the chakra to relax and consider her argument. He still had issues with Bat’s ability to make anything look like misfortune, because it encouraged a level of paranoia that surpassed healthy wariness far enough to land at too-busy-suspecting-everything-to-function.

But Komachi did have a point. “I suppose it’s the difference between the Mizukage controlling lava and someone at roughly your level who says, ‘Well, I know how volcanoes are _made_ , we can probably swing one with basic shit you’ve known for years. Hold this ninja wire and stand _right there_.”

He swiped the glass in front of him – full again, Otter was such a professional – and downed it as fast as he could. Even before he’d come here, he’d known that there were mutters that Drowning used the same stuff to plaster patrons as they did for disinfectant, and he did not want to risk more of a taste than he had to.

He shuddered with a deep grimace at the steady all the way down and imagined he could feel it disinfecting his stomach.

“Shit,” Komachi said, jolting upright.

Towa stiffened and side-eyed his squad-mate. Her masked face wasn’t pointed toward him and her posture and stillness didn’t portray any emotion, but somehow Towa got a sense of dawning horror anyway.

“What?” he asked warily.

“Volcanoes,” Komachi answered, like that explained anything. She grabbed for him blindly, and when her head snapped his direction, he felt their eyes lock despite the empty black eye-slits of their masks.

It clicked. “She’s never done a volcano before,” he muttered, and he wondered if the sabotage specialist _would_ use ninja wire for it. Then again, if he were to bet on any random ninja tool for one of her plots, it would always be explosives.

“Towa, don’t give her ideas,” Komachi pleaded.

Towa blinked down at her a couple times and then reached up to pat her shoulder in a mockery of comfort. “I doubt I have to.”

They stared at each-other for a long moment, then Komachi turned back to the counter and buried her head in her arms.

Otter hummed again. That was apparently a thing for him. Towa was both annoyed and impressed. After all, it let him be so non-committal. What a way to prompt more information out of aggravated people without giving them justification to target you.

“The worst part,” Komachi said without looking up. “Is how casual she and Taicho are about it. Like yeah, making volcanoes with nothing more powerful or unattainable than a B-rank. That’s reasonable. That’s not the most bullshit bullshit I’ve ever heard.”

Their glasses refilled again but she didn’t look up. Towa downed his anyway.

“I think they do know it, though,” he mused, running a fingertip over the ring of condensation left on the counter in each of the places a glass had rested. “Isn’t that the whole premise of just, so many of our missions? It works _because_ no one would believe it’s possible.”

Otter huffed, drawing Towa’s attention in surprise at the expressive sound. “You got any actual examples you can give me?”

Towa tilted his head to the side to signal his consideration. There were only so many river-redirecting earthquakes or similarly chaotic disasters that had happened in the last century, so many of their missions would be compromised just by referencing them without much detail.

Beside him, Komachi hummed and lifted her head. “Well, this one time she suggested we pretend to be ghosts, and we’re a little skeptical because, you know, not many people believe in them. Our target probably wouldn’t.” Komachi sat back a little, seeming to warm to the topic as her posture opened to communicate emotion in lieu of facial expression. “Except Taicho’s actually sure he’s seen ghosts before and he’s really level-headed. And, I mean, it’s hard to scale what our squad gets up to now, but we’ve probably done more ridiculous things.”

She gave a shrug that included her whole arms, offering them a clear impression of wry acceptance behind the mask. “So we start talking logistics, and she asks for red dye and honey. Then she mixes them to about the right color of fresh blood except way too thick and who’s that really going to fool, right? And why bother? And then she drinks it, rinses the color from her teeth and says something about a waste of a meal. And we probably should have seen that coming since she specified that the dye had to be safe to ingest, but at this point I have no idea what she’s planning and then—”

“It turns out she can vomit on command,” Towa said, mildly amused at the rambling explanation.

“And she’s got some kind of trick,” Komachi continued, almost speaking over him with rising agitation. “I don’t even know if its genjutsu or ninjutsu or what, but she can look like she’s hit with a blade, walk around with the handle sticking out of her, and then pull it out perfectly clean. I just. _What is this person._ ”

Towa angled his head toward Komachi in a show of concern, but she just buried her masked face in her hands with a groan.

“Anyway,” Towa said with an awkward shrug, glad his grimace was hidden. “There she is henged as a guy who died a month back, and our target throws this butcher’s knife at her and it _hits_ , and she’s vomiting blood-colored honey mixed with chunks of I-don’t-want-to-know, and then she pulls out the knife and _looks_ at it like ‘Oh, that’s interesting. How did this get here?’ Then she casually drops it and walks _across the vomit_ while projecting the most intense KI I’ve felt in years and then – well, that guy believes in ghosts now, and I don’t blame him.”

He stared down at the wood of the counter, trying to ground himself in the contrast between the growing heat inside him and the mildly cool air of the room. “I don’t blame him,” Towa repeated. “I’d believe it, if I didn’t know she’d faked it.”

The room was silent for a moment that stretched out in uncomfortable stillness.

“Taicho believes,” Komachi said, voiced soft.

Towa blinked as it registered, remembering that discussion. “Right. I never understood how people could unless they were, like, willfully deluding themselves? But Taicho’s pissed about it, was pissed when we brought it up again after the mission. And not like stop-poking-at-classified-information pissed but stop-making-me-think-about-it. Like he’d rather never have met a ghost.”

“Well… yeah,” Komachi agreed. “And maybe seeing how well it can be faked should make him more skeptical – it should make _me_ more skeptical, but… The more we somehow become specialized as the team that does the unbelievable, more I’m inclined to believe it.”

“What? Come on, Komachi. How can Bat not make you skeptical of everything?”

“Just… think about it for a moment. Think about how Taicho met this ghost he wants to forget. There’s Bat and Taicho and they’re ‘problem-solving’ and they decide that a real ghost would be very useful because of course they do. And then Bat goes, ‘Well, I know how ghosts are _made_.’”

Towa stared at his partner. Komachi turned her head to stare back.

“Shit,” he heard himself saying, feeling oddly disconnected as he pictured the scene. “You’re absolutely right.”

“Yeah,” Komachi said, and her head fell back down on her folded arms.

Towa looked over at Otter, who stared back for several silent seconds. Towa wondered if he was making an expression behind his mask and not bothering to project it into his body language.

“Well,” Otter said slowly, as if weighing the words as he spoke them. “I think I was more surprised when I thought you needed to report her.”

Towa tilted his head in a show of inquiry while Komachi just grumbled into the counter. Towa spared a moment of detached appreciation that the wood was so clean she felt comfortable drooping over it. Anywhere else and her arms would be sticking to the surface.

Maybe there was a chakra trick to cleaning it.

Otter shrugged. “I was there when she called Wolf-san ‘senpai.’ Any kohai of his is going to be a good comrade possessed of unrealistic amounts of composure.”

“So Wolf-san is to blame for this,” Towa said, staring into the distance and feeling warm and mildly dizzy with the revelation. Or the alcohol. Both, maybe?

“Um, no,” Otter said, pushing another drink at him, this one full just past the brim. “Do not pick that fight, kid.”

Towa stared at him blankly despite feeling the fire sputter back out of him. “Not a kid,” he said flatly.

“Mm-hmm,” Otter said. “Next to Wolf-san, we’re all kids here. Finish your drink.”

**Author's Note:**

> No, I didn't give Shikako the ability to vomit on command. She just used the storage seals in her cheeks. And yes, honey mixed with red food coloring and diluted just a little can look _exactly_ like blood. I learned this while helping with one of my best friend's photo projects. On a related note, while I normally like honey, I don't recommend drinking it straight.


End file.
